


Sentinel

by Nevcolleil



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 20,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2062242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Charles is fairly sure that he's been humoring a madman for the past twenty-four hours of their acquaintance.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Then Hank steps out from behind a rental car on the lot where they've arranged transportation for the road trip Logan's insisted upon. Hank raises one arm with a dispassionate look upon his face, and his fist transforms into a large, nasty looking weapon...</i></p><p> </p><p>This is a <i>Terminator</i> AU in which Charles learns that he can bear children (and also that robots from the future want to kill him for it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Charles is fairly sure that he's been humoring a madman for the past twenty-four hours of their acquaintance.

And then Hank steps out from behind a rental car on the lot where they've arranged transportation for the road trip Logan's insisted upon. Not a moment earlier, Charles had watched Hank step into the rental office, and as he continues to watch, the second Hank raises one arm with a dispassionate blank upon his face, and his fist transforms into a large, nasty looking weapon.

"Charles, no!" Logan screams, several paces to Charles's right.

The thing wearing Hank's face attempts to spray Charles with a round of bullets, but Logan launches himself between Charles and the machine - taking every shot that would have hit Charles in the center of his chest. 

Only after they outrun the monster, collect Hank, and regroup in a seedy little motel on a completely random street, does Charles allow himself to - as Logan calls it - "freak out".

"This is insane," Charles keeps repeating. He looks from Hank's pale, shocked face to Logan's calm, knowing one, and repeats the words louder when no one disagrees with him. "This is _insane_. You're insane, you do know that? This is all insane... _I am not pregnant_ ! I cannot _be_ pregnant. I'm a man!"

"I know, Charles. I know..." Logan just lets Charles's panic run its course, and then explains, "You didn't know about your secondary mutation until you were, like, six months along."

"And, no, I don't know who the other father is. Or's gonna be..." Logan adds, as if to head Charles off, but Charles hasn't even gotten to the point of considering that there must be another _father_ if he's to have a baby.

"And Charles and his... kids," Hank recovers enough to ask, "they're really the only ones who can stop these things?"

"Charles is the most powerful telepath the world's ever gonna see," Logan says, looking at Charles with something soft and strong in his eyes.

Charles has to look away from it. He doesn't even have his powers right now. Logan claims that Hank will one day devise a version of the serum that does not numb them, but he says that Charles never told him how. Charles isn't sure he actually believes that he'll one day be that man Logan claims to have known and fought beside for nearly half a century - a man worthy of the deep respect and utter faith that marks Logan's gaze whenever he looks at Charles.

"Marie can take another mutant's powers or sap the power right out of them," Logan says, seeming not to notice Charles's discomfort at learning that a child of his could have such a potentially dangerous ability. "Trask used her DNA to make his second series able to mimic our abilities, but none of them function right when she's around 'em."

"And James cancels out mutant powers somehow," Logan continues. "Sentinels can't pull any of their tricks around him either." Then he grins. "David's just one hell of a fighter. He's telepathic, telekinetic, pyrokinetic... He can blow the fuckers out of the sky with his _mind_ when he's juiced up enough."

Perhaps at another time, under other circumstances... given time to process everything, Charles would find all of this fascinating.

As it stands, he feels a bit like he's about to pass out. And no sooner than he thinks this, does Charles feel _more_ than a bit like he's about to pass out...

"Oh, no you don't..." Logan says easily, leaning forward and steadying Charles by the shoulders before he can tip forward and off of the bed Charles is perched on the edge of, while Logan crouches on the floor in front of him.

Logan's hands are firm and warm, and achingly gentle, as Logan eases Charles back until he's lying on the bed, Hank fussing about in the background. "Take it easy for a minute. I know this is all a lot to take in," Logan says.

Charles hears Hank supply, "He's due for another dose of the serum."

But Charles's eyes are fixed on Logan's face, so close to his for the moment. 

It's a kind face - incredibly handsome underneath all of the scruff. Or perhaps even with it...

Woozily, Charles thinks, 'Stop it, Charles, you undisciplined slut. It's thinking like this that's going to get you into all of this trouble.'

Logan's short, startled laughter sobers Charles right up.

"Yeah, kid. I guess he is," Logan says, humor plain in his voice.

Charles wants to ask Hank to tell him - please - that he hadn't just projected what he thinks he just projected, but one look at Hank's scandalized expression and Charles has his answer.

If the murderous, shapeshifting robot who'd been sent back in time specifically to assassinate Charles were to burst through the door at this instant... Charles isn't altogether certain he wouldn't help it to do its job.


	2. Chapter 2

It takes them a lot longer to get to the fellow Logan's said can help them free Erik than it should. The Sentinel keeps crossing their path, forcing them to double back or to flee well out of their way.

"Why don't you just stop and fight it?" Hank asks what Charles will not, oddly unwilling to encourage Logan's confronting their pursuer head on. Nevermind that he's seen Logan intercept its bullets and then spit them back out, not a scratch left on Logan's body to show for it. "Couldn't you get close enough to-"

Hank spreads the middle three fingers of each of his hands out wide and makes downward slashing motions - mimicing Logan's use of his claws - in the air.

"Too risky," Logan replies. "It takes on the powers of whatever mutant it touches. So if it ends up touching me..."

"We get a Sentinel that automatically repairs itself, undoing whatever damage we manage to do to it," Charles gathers. The thought is chilling. Hank looks fairly queasy thinking about it. "Well, that would be lovely."

"We'll fight it when there are enough of us to stand a chance," Logan says to Hank directly, and Charles tries not to bristle at the subtle - if accurate - implication that he is next to useless in a fight right now. Even if Charles had his powers, and felt comfortable using them to direct people out of the Sentinel's way - or even into its path, to distract or to help fight it - he couldn't move fast enough while bound to a wheelchair to engage the Sentinel effectively, unarmed.

"And in the meantime?" Hank asks.

"We keep making our way to Peter," says Logan. But his eyes are on Charles when he says, "It might help if we split up for a while."

"What? Why?"

Charles doesn't join Hank in voicing his skepticism, but he shares it.

He has a feeling he knows in which way Logan is going to suggest that they organize this split.

"Sentinels can sense mutants," Logan says. "First thing they were programmed to do. Could be, we won't get found out again so fast if there are less of us in one place at one time to find."

"Would two mutants really be less difficult for the Sentinel to spot than three?" Charles asks.

"Maybe not," Logan says without missing a beat. "But if just one of us goes and gets Peter while the other two sit tight, it might up our chances of getting in and out of DC in one piece."

"That's very comforting, Logan," Hank says in a tone of voice that almost makes Charles smile. He's obviously caught on to where this is going. "But have you forgotten that this Peter guy is _your_ friend? I don't know anything about him, and he doesn't know me!"

"In 1973, he didn't know me either," Logan says. "And I'll tell you everything you need to know. Besides, this Sentinel's programmed to make Charles a priority. If it doesn't think killing you's gonna help it get to him, it should leave you alone."

Charles can hardly blame Hank for failing to be comforted by that. They're on the run from a time-traveling robot, hell-bent on assassinating a child-bearing man destined to save the world. 'Should', as a concept, seems to carry little weight these days.

"Just don't take any unnecessary risks, Hank," Charles tells his friend and then feels the desperate need to have his words heeded no doubt apparent in his voice. Charles has lost a great many things, and Hank is his family - his best friend in all the world. Losing him doesn't bear thinking about. 

"You either, Charles," Hank says, giving Charles a careful, meaningful look.

It isn't difficult to interpret Hank's meaning, considering how close Hank has kept to Charles since Charles inadvertently revealed his attraction to Logan. Logan's still someone neither of them know as well as he knows them, despite all that he's done to help them.

'I'm not _actually_ an undisciplined slut,' Charles would like to say. But seeing as they've been given testimony that Charles is going to fuck _someone_ in the not-so-distant future, Charles isn't sure he would be believed.

So he says he will be safe, for the sake of Hank's peace of mind, and they leave it at that.


	3. Chapter 3

"Sitting tight", Charles had already realized, does not actually involve sitting anywhere for a prolonged period of time.

Charles and Logan make their way carefully towards D.C. while Hank takes a separate path - faster and less circuitous - in the same direction. 

Charles would be comforted by the fact that Logan was right, and they don't run into the Sentinel again so soon as they had the last time they'd come out of hiding, except that if the Sentinel isn't with them, it could very well be with Hank at this exact moment.

"He'll be fine," Logan says, when Charles's worries begin to plague him so badly that he barely sees the scenery passing by outside the car Logan stole for this leg of their journey. "Beast's smart and he's tougher than he looks when he's not blue," Logan reminds, as if Charles needs to be told his friends better qualities.

He smiles, though, at Logan's reference to Hank's furrier self. 

"He's stopped using the serum in the future, then?" Charles asks.

Logan shrugs. He's smoking another one of his near ever-present cigars, dark eyes hidden behind an even darker pair of sunglasses. He has one elbow out the window of the car, and his jacket is off, thrown carelessly into the back seat. 

He looks and sounds so at ease, and even if it's just for show - for Charles's benefit - Charles finds that looking at Logan looking so casual helps to calm his frazzled nerves.

"Dunno. If he hasn't, he's perfected it," Logan says. "He lets the Beast out when he needs it, or so people can recognize him, but he can shut it off just as quick."

Charles is happy to hear that Hank will gain this kind of control. It frustrates him, however, to be reminded that one day he, too, will benefit from a better cure for his damaged spine. And yet they don't know what that is. They don't know so many things about the future, and the future has become their primary mission.

"I have to admit, I don't see how I'm meant to be the man you keep telling me about," Charles says, when he and Logan are parked at a gas stop just outside the DC city limits. "I'm not even talking about the children. I'm-"

'Broken' is the first word that comes to Charles's mind. He's leaned up against the back of the car, eyes on the city skyline in the distance (and carefully not on Logan, who always watches him with such-)

His arms are crossed over his chest. Logan sets one hand on them, and when Charles looks up he gives Charles a squeeze.

"Look, I know you're having a hard time believing in yourself right now," Logan says. "You don't have to tell me what _that_ feels like... Trust me, I've been there. There was a time, anybody woulda been a fool to believe in anything I did or said, because I didn't believe in any of it either."

"So what happened?" Charles asks. The answer to that seems like the most important thing that Charles could ask for, with the way Logan is focused on him, gaze intent and heavy with some memory that must mean an awful lot to him.

"You happened," Logan says, and he smiles. "You sent your X-Men after me and wouldn't take no for an answer when I tried to tell you to shove your offer to help me be somebody- Well. You can imagine where I'd tell a guy to go shove something."

Charles smiles back despite himself. "A few select destinations come to mind."

"A few, huh?"

It feels good to talk and tease with this man as if they are the old friends and allies Logan swears them to be. But.

Charles shakes his head. "I'm sorry. I'd like to think that I can live up to this regard you seem to have for me - for my future self... But you talk about my reopening the school... reassembling the X-men- Leading people, even raising them - raising my _children_..." Such a wave of self-doubt and self-loathing rolls over Charles that he almost chokes with it. "I'm sorry, my friend, but I can't see myself accomplishing any of those things. I can't see myself as anything but what I am now. And I am no leader."

Logan's eyes have grown more and more hot - his face darker and darker - as Charles has spoken. Charles saw but simply couldn't stop himself.

So when Logan suddenly reaches out, Charles flinches. But Logan's hands are gentle as they settle to either side of Charles's face, and then Charles is frozen - enthralled by Logan's steady gaze and by Logan's touch. 

It's 1973 in America. Charles has never let a man touch him with even this much tenderness in full view of the public, but Logan shows no concern for anyone but Charles as he brushes his thumb over the curve of Charles's cheek.

Charles doesn't stop him.

"You will be," Logan says, as if it's the one thing he knows more surely than any other. "You're the best damned father your kids could have had. And you're the best- you're the _only_ man who coulda put the X-men together. Who coulda put _me_ back together."

Before Charles can ask Logan what he means by that, Logan goes on to say, "No matter what happens, you gotta promise me something, Charles. You gotta promise, no matter how shitty you feel right now... no matter how shitty things are gonna look, a little later on... Promise you won't forget the names I told you before. Remember them and find them - _us_ ; bring us together. We can't do it without you."

Charles takes a deep breath. He can only say, "I'll try my best."

Logan smiles again. "Trust me. Your best is enough."


	4. Chapter 4

Seeing Erik again after so many years - after so many losses - is a distinctly emotional, and mostly unpleasant, experience.

Perhaps it is most unpleasant because it's far more pleasing to Charles than it should be to see Erik again, and without that _damned_ helmet. To think that he and Erik will one day work together again...

Sure, Charles puts up an ambitious front - he yells in Erik's face, even gives in to the fear and anger coiling helplessly in his gut and punches Erik. 

But the anger has faded from Charles's heart. The fear, on the other hand-

Erik listens as Logan tells him what he had told Charles and Hank, what feels now like ages ago. Erik's face goes dark but inscrutable when Logan explains that the Sentinel's primary target is Charles, and then again when Charles's children are discussed.

When Charles's secondary mutation is revealed, Erik is caught quite obviously - almost comically - off-guard, but he recovers himself quickly.

Charles nervously waits for him to say something, face feeling hot for so many reasons; Charles can only hope that it doesn't show in the color of his skin.

Erik's expression has gone suddenly, alarmingly thoughtful. 

"Who is the other father to these oh-so-dangerous mutants your Sentinels are so afraid of?" Erik asks, sounding almost mocking.

But Charles knows him better than that. "Does it matter?" Charles says quickly. His evasion is probably much more telling than a straightforward denial would have been, but Charles doesn't have it in him to argue with Erik on this matter. Especially not when he's relatively certain that he and Erik have come to the same conclusion as to who will most likely father Charles's future children.

"Erik, this thing must know that now we've learned of its existence, we will attempt to stop the Sentinel program from ever coming to be," Charles says, which has the intended affect of leaching the curiosity out of Erik's gaze. Fury takes its place rather quickly. "It means to kill me before we can do any such thing. I think we should discuss what's to be done if it is successful."

They're on Charles's jet, headed back to the mansion. Erik sits across from Charles and Logan sits across the aisle from him; Hank is in the cockpit, at the controls. 

Erik opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, Logan breathes out a mouthful of pungent smoke and shifts the cigar in his mouth to between his teeth.

"Not a problem," he says. "Cause you aren't dying. Plan is, we kill the Sentinel, then we figure out the rest."

"I don't recall our discussing any plan," Erik says with a sharp eye aimed at Logan, speaking over Charles's attempt to disagree. "But that much is a given. We simply can't afford to lose you, Charles," Erik continues, holding up a hand to forestall any of Charles's further attempts. "You are obviously quite invaluable to our cause. You're the one man their side fears so badly they would break every rule in order to destroy... and the one man we felt it necessary to protect."

He's very rational with every rebuttal he gives to Charles's many arguments that they needn't focus quite so much of their energies solely on protecting him. In a way, it's exactly what Charles might once have hoped for - an honest dialogue between equals, neither side resorting to generalities or prejudices (however earned) to plead their case.

But Charles knows where Erik has found the _graciousness_ to try and reason with Charles. He knows the way Erik's mind works maybe better than Erik knows himself. In Erik's mind, the outcome of every disagreement he and Charles have ever had - or will have - has already been decided. He's always believed his way to be the right way, and now that he knows exactly what doing things his way will (and will _not_ ) cost him, Charles's every dissenting opinion has been reduced to no more than a theoretical debate.

Charles is not _quite_ as rational as he would normally be, as a result. But Erik doesn't respond to any of Charles's barbs or accusations, and when neither of them can think of anything else to say of consequence, Erik excuses himself to the cockpit to talk with Hank. He leaves Charles's angry, red-faced presence with such a mild expression of his own, he might just as well have smiled.

Charles's breath comes quick and uneasy in the aftermath. He feels as though he might have a panic attack, right then and there, further diminishing his remaining dignity.

"Charles, hey... Hey, are you-"

Logan had given Charles and Erik some semblance of privacy as their talk turned insular, retreating to a seat at the rear of the cabin, but when he notices Charles's distress, he rises as if to come to his side.

Charles is already out of his own seat, however. He stumbles for the closet-sized washroom at the back of the jet with no air in his lungs to explain himself.

A splash of water on his face and a moment to quietly fall to pieces where no one can see him will not make Charles's life any less of an absolute disaster, at this point, but Charles has become quite familiar with that old saying about storms and ports. 

And he'll cling to what he can find before the winds pick him up to toss him about yet again.


	5. Chapter 5

"You wanna tell me what that was about?" Logan asks as soon as Charles reappears in the cabin, gladly taking the seat across from Logan in the rear - as far from the cockpit (and Erik) as possible. 

"I've just learned that it's my _fate_ to either be assassinated by a time-traveling robot fashioned from my sister's DNA," Charles cannot help but say, with every bit of bitter helplessness that he feels, "or allow myself to be _impregnated_ no less than three times over the span of the next ten years." His laughter, he knows, falls on _just_ this side of hysterical, so he keeps it quiet and short. "And you'd like to know why I might feel on the verge of a major emotional breakdown?" Charles doesn't really ask.

His whole demeanor deflates, however, when he realizes that Logan is not judging Charles's reactions - he's genuinely concerned about them. 

"Yeah, but why _now_?" Logan says. "That's the calmest I've ever seen him during one of your 'philosophical discussions'." Logan uses his fingers to frame his words in quotes and nods towards the front of the plane. "You've been shot at six times since I've been here... almost blown up and crushed _twice_ , and Magneto not throwing a hissy fit when you two disagree about somethin' is what's finally too much?"

"It's him, isn't it?" Charles can't hold the words in any longer. He thinks they might tear their way out if he tries.

"What's him?" Logan asks, but he goes very still. "Who?"

" _Erik_." Charles swallows. Using names makes it all so much more real... so much more unavoidable, but there's no real way for him to avoid this indefinitely, is there? "Marie, James, David... The ones you told me about. They're Erik's children."

"I meant it, Charles. You never told me who their father was," Logan says. "I doubt even they knew." He speaks so carefully... as if choosing each and every word, or consciously rejecting others. Charles begins to wonder- "What makes you think it's him?"

"He's the only mutant I've ever-" Charles starts to say, then he sees what he thought he was hearing. Logan is very tense. His left hand grips his arm rest so tightly the muscles in his forearm strain the rolled up edge of his shirtsleeve. 

"It would make sense," Charles says, even as he watches Logan. He doesn't feel the words he's saying, a strange numbness settling in where only desperate terror had begun to nest. "You were right. When you said that he's someone I loved... I did. I _do_. It's not enough to solve our differences, but I do. I think he even loves me, in his way..."

"You talk about the guy like you think he's gonna gut you soon as I leave you two alone in a room," Logan says, the anger Charles has watched grow in his face, in his posture, bleeding into his voice at last. "And you think he's gonna knock you up? That would make sense to you?"

"As much as any _goddamned_ thing does right now," Charles says firmly.

He knows what Logan is asking, though, and it feels somehow safer to talk to him about Erik than it has with Hank or anyone else who knew them both before things went wrong. So Charles doesn't hold himself back.

"Ever since Cuba, I've been afraid I might- We could lose ourselves so easily in one another, you see," Charles lets himself admit for the first time aloud. "It's why Erik wears that helmet. We have a tendency to do things... when we're together... that neither of us is sure we would do if it were not for the other."

Charles can no longer look in Logan's direction. Had the older version of himself shared these things with his oh so loyal friend? Considering the faith Logan put in Charles, upon sight, as easily as he had, Charles doubts it. "I once held a man still so Erik could kill him," Charles says, eyes on the endless blue outside the window to Charles's right. "Slowly. I don't think Erik knew how it- But perhaps he did. Would he have stopped? If he'd known how he was hurting me..."

Charles says this last thing more quietly than the rest, though the words scream the loudest in his head. "I don't think he would."

It's so quiet in the cabin, Charles can hear Logan breathing over the hum of the jet's engines - over the pounding of his own heart. Or maybe it's not that the cabin is so quiet, but that Logan is leaning in so close...

When Charles turns his head, Logan has moved to the edge of his seat, leaning almost entirely around the small table between them.

"Hey, Charles, look at me," Logan says in a voice gone low and dead serious.

Charles can't help but do as he says. 

" _Fuck_ fate, or destiny or whatever," Logan surprises Charles by saying. "Do you- Do you wanna give Mag- Erik another chance?"

Charles shudders and allows his eyes to flutter closed. His hands grip tight to the arm rests to either side of him. "No. I don't..."

He and Erik could be happy together, in a world where they weren't forced to take opposite sides on almost every important issue - maybe in the future they are close. If Erik could let go of his rage long enough to give Charles's peace a chance - or Charles could accept Erik without changing him, and not in turn risk becoming a changed man himself...

But neither of them is in that place right now. And for how many years will Charles struggle within the confines of his decision, if he chooses to forget and forgive all that Erik has done - all that he will do? Logan said that Charles's own children likely do not know their father. Whatever Charles might give of himself, to make a reconciliation with Erik work, it will bring him little more happiness than he has now, even _fifty years_ in the future.

"Then don't." Logan says those two words with such force that Charles's eyes immediately snap open.

"Logan-"

"You don't owe him - or _anyone_ \- anything you don't want to give. Believe me." Logan's eyes narrow like he's seeing the things he must be remembering as he says, "Before the war, you give Magneto plenty of chances to get on the right side of things. He doesn't. Not til it's almost too late."

"You realize that you were sent here to protect my children... not potentially stop me from conceiving them," Charles says, startled enough to almost smile.

Logan leans back and puffs again on the cigar that's just been burning down between his fingers as he's given Charles his advice. His eyes crinkle in a way that suggest smiling even with his lips otherwise engaged.

"Yeah, well, _you_ sent me here to do it, didn't you?" Logan says. "And you know how good I am at takin' orders I don't like." Charles is beginning to get an idea, yes.

"Besides, you don't _know_ Erik's your baby daddy," Logan goes on to say. "Whoever you have kids with, those kids are gonna be special. They're _yours_ , they'd have to be."

"I don't know that it's really that simple," Charles tells him, but now Charles is smiling. Twice now, Logan has talked Charles down from an emotional crisis of some sort - or has it been three times? And to think - one of the first things Logan had said to him was that he isn't "real good" at convincing people with words rather than actions.

"What?" Logan says, brow furrowing, when Charles _keeps_ smiling at him.

Charles chuckles at himself and forces his eyes away. "Nothing," he says. "I'm just rather glad I chose _you_ to send back. You've helped me more than you can know."

From the corner of his eye, Charles sees Logan's face soften.

"It's the least I could do, Charles," Logan says quietly.


	6. Chapter 6

They can't actually land directly at the mansion - Logan says it's possible the Sentinel will risk trying to corner Charles there. Hank lands the jet in a field far enough away that if the Sentinel is lying in wait, it won't detect them, but close enough that they can get to Hank's lab on foot.

Well, on foot and by stolen transportation. 

"I have to say, Charles... If you're planning to teach grand theft auto at that school of yours," Erik says as Logan hotwires the pickup truck Erik had liberated from a nearby farm. "You seem to do a proper job of it."

Logan smirks up from under the dash at the both of them and tells Erik, "I look like a schoolboy to you, bub?"

They came up with a plan in the air to accomplish their two main goals: to decommission the Sentinel program before it ever starts, and to keep Charles alive in the meantime. Thanks to Logan, they know how they can do the former - stop Raven from killing the Sentinel's creator, Bolivar Trask, at a peace summit in Paris in two days' time. As for the latter... With some equipment from Hank's lab, they think they can create a diversion that will throw the Sentinel off their tail for at least a little while, perhaps even destroy it if they get very lucky.

This plan requires them to split up again - this time two by two. Logan will take Hank to his lab; Erik will go with Charles to Cerebro.

Logan looks unhappy as he suggests this exact grouping, but he says, "Your powers are no good against the Sentinel, one on one," talking to Erik. "It's not made out of old school metal. But there's plenty of that down in the basement if the Sentinel somehow gets down there."

Charles isn't sure he wants to be down in the basement, alone with Erik, Sentinel or no Sentinel. He needs his powers, it's been decided, to locate the mutants who can help them defeat his assassin, should it survive Hank's "distraction".

So Charles skipped his last dose of the serum. It sits in its case in a pocket of his jacket, calling to him every time his back twinges - or the tingling sensations in his legs increase - while Charles leans heavily on a cane. 

By the time they get to Cerebro, Erik will have to carry him. And Charles cannot help but bristle at the need to show any weakness in front of the man.

'He's hardly going to try and impregnate you _here and now_ ,' Charles must tell himself, very carefully ensuring that he isn't projecting now that his powers are coming back.

But when he feels Hank's and Logan's eyes on his back, as he and Erik drive away, Charles says, somewhat sharply, inside their heads, 'I am still a grown man... despite the fact that I apparently have a _womb_. I can take care of myself.'

Charles senses Logan's laughter and Hank's sheepishness,though he can no longer see their faces.

He's surprised to find Erik watching him peripherally when Charles pulls his focus back to himself.

"I suppose our time traveling friend is quite used to having you inside of his head?" Erik asks.

Charles isn't sure where Erik means to go with this question - their powers have been a sore subject between them (well, for Charles) since Erik began wearing the helmet - but he answers it. Distracted by other worries, he doesn't perhaps choose his words as carefully as he should.

"He seems to expect it."

Logan does. He'd slipped into speaking with Charles telepathically as soon as Charles's powers had returned well enough for Charles to reply, repeating himself out loud only for Hank's and Erik's benefit.

In fact, now that Charles thinks about it, he wonders if Logan hasn't been talking to him all along - only Charles couldn't hear him. 

It's probably only because Logan and Charles's future self all but live on the battleground; telepathy would make for an invaluable tool in coordinating movements. Logan, and no doubt the rest of his "X-Men", must keep their minds open to Charles for that reason. 

Still, the level of trust and familiarity implied by Logan's attitude towards Charles's powers-

"Oh, yes," Erik says so quietly, under the sounds of the old Ford and the gravel road beneath them, that Charles could almost miss it. "I'm sure he and I are the best of friends in the future."

"I don't know what you mean," Charles says, mirroring Erik's neutrality.

Which lasts perhaps only a minute longer...

"Come now, Charles. Enough pretense." Erik's voice shreds Charles's hope that they could put off this conversation for... ever - not only with Erik's certainty, but with the thin thread of emotion woven into it. 

Charles won't read Erik's mind - he said he wouldn't - but he hardly has to do that to read the delicate sentiment he sees in Erik's eyes when Erik glances briefly at him.

"They want you dead so badly they sent that thing out there through _time_ to kill you..."

"Erik-"

"...to kill our children..."

"I never said they were yours, Erik."

Erik's hands grip the truck's steering wheel so tightly, if he's not bending the metal of the wheel itself, he must be exerting every ounce of control he has over his powers not to do so.

Erik lets out a short bark of laughter, and it is a decidedly unsettling sound.

Erik's fear has always concerned Charles much more than his own. Because Erik lets himself feel it so rarely, he's never learned what to do with it.

"Then who am I to believe will father your children?" Erik asks. " _Hank_?"

Unbidden, the memory of Logan - touching Charles's face so gently with his rough hands - pops into Charles's mind.

He pushes the paradoxical thought away.

"Regardless-" Charles begins.

"Yes, _regardless_ ," Erik talks over him. "If this does not convince you that I've been right to fear the humans all along, I've no idea what will. Me? Weeping over your fallen corpse?"

"Am _I_ to believe that you would weep for me, Erik?" Charles asks.

It isn't until Erik replies with a low, and quiet, "You know that I would," that Charles remembers - as he usually tries not to do - the look on Erik's face as he knelt on a certain beach in Cuba.

The cab of the truck fills with silence.

Charles cannot think what to say into it.

Eventually, Erik tells him, "I've always known that you are my future, Charles... I had hoped that, perhaps now, you could accept that I am yours."

It takes far more effort than it should simply for Charles to draw an even breath.

 _This_ is what he'd been afraid of, back on the plane - always. It's not when he is resorting to violence or shouting vitriol, or even lashing out thoughtlessly, when Erik is at his most dangerous to Charles.

It's when he's simply speaking from his mind and his heart.

"Erik, I-"

Suddenly a weight drops onto the hood of the truck, and Erik swerves - the Ford's tires spitting up dirt and gravel in great clouds that billow outward.

At the same time, Erik - but _not_ Erik - stares coolly, blankly, through the windshield and into the cab. He glances at the carbon copy of himself (the original) - struggling to keep the Ford on the dirt road - but focuses on Charles with unsettling intent.

One of the Sentinel's hands grip the roof of the truck tightly, but the other remains free - and in front of Charles's eyes it elongates, warps. It becomes a thick but sharply pointed blade.

The Sentinel raises it, gaze fixed on its target as Erik shouts, " _No_!"

Anyone else might have slammed on the brakes and attempted to jar the Sentinel loose that way.

Erik lays on the gas, and the hood of the truck pops up and out as if propelled by a hydraulic spring.

The Sentinel flies several feet into the air, clutching at the hood beneath its feet on reflex - as if surfing the wind - and inertia carries it behind the Ford as the pickup continues to speed down the dirt road.

" _Mein Gott_..." Erik mutters, like its the only speech he can remember how to articulate, barely audible under Charles's own "Oh my god!"

He's seen as much of the Sentinel's impressive abilities as he cares to, and yet the experience of encountering it never becomes less shocking.

Charles frantically begins rolling down the window on the truck's passenger-side door and fumbles open the glove compartment on the truck's dash.

"What are you doing?" Erik demands, as soon as he's able. Charles looks up, distracted only for a second by the way strips of metal seem to be peeling themselves away from the exterior of the truck, melting and reforming into jagged blades and spikes.

The truck's speedometer spins as if overwhelmed.

"Hoping!" Charles says, heart tripping in relief when he sees that there are, indeed, shells rolling about in the compartment otherwise empty save for a grease rag and some odds and ends.

"Hoping for what?" Erik asks, but Charles has already twisted around on the bench seat to get at the shotgun mounted on a rack above the pickup truck's narrow rear window.

Erik turns his eyes back to the road ahead of them - and behind them, in the truck's mirrors, watching for the Sentinel to return - as Charles loads the shotgun with two shells and stuffs more into the pockets at the front of his shirt.

"I'm hoping that you can drive this thing in a straight line," Charles says, swallowing down the terror that bubbles up in his throat when he thinks about what he's saying. "The feeling's completely gone from my legs now," is all he can offer in the way of an explanation.

Then he's pulling himself up on, through, and out of the passenger door window with a grunt, gripping the frame of the Ford for dear life.

"Charles! Are you out of your mind! Get-"

" _Erik_! Behind us!"

The Sentinel has come back into view, returned to its natural, robotic form. When Charles first spots it, it is a considerable distance behind them on the road, but its legs pump at a frightening speed.

It gains on them quickly.

"Es bist ein Hurensohn..." A spike separates itself from the truck completely and hurtles at the Sentinel as Charles wedges himself into one corner of the window, hoping the dead weight of his legs beneath him will be enough to keep him from flying out of the truck completely. He lets go of the truck's frame and grabs for the shotgun he propped up against the door where he could reach it.

The Sentinel dodges Erik's spike, but Charles's shot hits it - and although the machine hardly slows at the impact, it is distracted enough in the process that the next piece of metal that flies its way clips it on one leg.

The Sentinel ducks into a roll and comes back to its feet in moments, still running.

Charles slumps back into the truck to reload.

"You're even crazier now than when I met you!" Erik yells, face strained tight and sweating with exertion. Charles is relatively certain he is propelling the truck forward as much as driving it at this point. They're certainly moving faster than Charles has ever seen someone drive in a beat-up old Ford. "Don't go out there again!"

'If you're worried for me, then help me keep my balance,' Charles thinks at him. Erik curses, but this time when Charles reaches to pull himself out of the window, his side of the cab begins to crumple around him, obligingly opening itself up in the back so that Charles has a clear view of his target.

Pieces of the crumpled metal creep away and reform into a sheet that Erik flings at the Sentinel. It wraps around it at the same time that Charles aims for the Sentinel's head.

'Thank you!' Charles thinks at Erik and grins.

Even from their distance, Charles can see that at least some of the buck shot hits the Sentinel - it's head jerks back and there are sparks where, presumably, some of the buckshot must have hit something advantageous. 

Erik's metal sheet is what really takes the Sentinel down, however. It fuses around the Sentinel like a fist and brings it to a complete stop.

Charles loses sight of it in seconds, nothing behind him and Erik than the dusty wake of what's left of the truck.


	7. Chapter 7

After the adrenaline rush of their journey to the mansion, it's almost anticlimactic when they arrive to find that the Sentinel hasn't somehow regrouped and beat them to it - not that Charles is complaining.

Rather than have Charles climb out of his side of the truck - warped and reshaped as it is - Erik waves a hand and the truck splits open even further. 

Charles's previous hope to return the stolen vehicle to its owner, after everything, now seems to have been rather foolishly optimistic.

Charles expects Erik to fashion a seat of some sort for him, out of yet more metal from the truck, and levitate him into the mansion - but Erik walks around the wreck of the Ford, instead, and holds out a hand to Charles which Charles accepts before he can think better of it.

Erik helps Charles lift his legs one by one out of the mangled cab, and before Charles knows it, he is indeed being carried towards the mansion's rearmost entrance.

"Say it and you'll wait for me to finish with Cerebro convinced that you've the intellect of a six year old girl," Charles says, not considering what Erik - helmetless - might make of the empty threat.

But Erik simply raises a brow. "I thought you said you'd never be 'getting inside' this head again," he says, catching Charles off guard with his suggestive tone.

"And I haven't," Charles tells him, attempting to sound as if he hasn't noticed. "You're smirking, Erik. It's not hard to imagine what you're thinking."

"Oh, I think you might be surprised."

It's the most pleasant words they've exchanged with one another in as long as Charles can remember. Probably since Cuba, or even just before that. Politics and the complications of sex with someone new, amidst a good number of life changes, had already sewn the seeds of trouble between them. Charles looks back and can see that now.

Charles would have thought that those memories, coupled with Erik's nearness - not to mention Erik's arms around Charles - would cause him discomfort if he examined them too closely. But he thinks back on them now, he breathes in Erik's familiar scent, and Charles feels only a sad sort of nostalgia. He is still aware of Erik; that attraction has not faded fully, but it is not the sweeping, destructive thing it had once seemed to Charles's resolve.

Erik carries Charles all the way to his study, and he deposits Charles in the wheelchair that waits in a closet there.

Charles's syringe still waits, also, in its case in Charles's pocket, and Charles keeps a hand on it as Erik wheels him towards Cerebro - the reminder that he is not back in this chair _for good_ allowing Charles to take calm, steady breaths in the meantime.

He catches Erik watching the gesture with a tightly-clenched jaw, but Erik says nothing. Erik says nothing until Charles has finished contacting Raven and Alex, but Charles can't allow himself to worry about that.

Charles takes a full dose of Hank's serum while Erik retreats just outside of Cerebro's chamber to wait for him. After that, they head for Hank's lab, to meet up with the others, Charles wheeling himself.

Hank takes one look at Charles and Erik, as they enter his lab, and his face breaks out into such happiness and relief that it spreads to Charles's face - and to Erik's in some degree.

"Oh, thank god!" Hank says.

He's busy at one lab table, Logan half-crouched down near to him, arms tensed at his sides and claws ready.

Logan's claws retract and Logan grins. "Charles..." he says. And then, in not quite so soft and relieved a tone: "Erik."

"So, while we've been battling your robot assassin, what have you two been doing?" Erik asks in a very droll voice.

Hank seems very happy to show them.

"But first," he says, somewhat apologetically, "I need your blood." He looks between Charles and Erik as he says it.

"A lot of it," Logan says, grimacing at a cooler sitting at one end of Hank's lab table.

Charles decides he really doesn't want to know.

But Erik says, "I beg your pardon?"

"Trust me," Hank tells them both. "This is going to work."

Erik glances at Charles, stood beside him, for just a second. "I'm sure you've said that before," he says, but he's already taking off his jacket.


	8. Chapter 8

Charles isn't sure which part of the next leg of their plan poses more danger - sending two of them back down the farm road where the Sentinel had chased him and Erik, risking his and Logan's traveling to a commercial airline by ground and then taking a commuter flight to Paris, or convincing Erik that splitting up again is the right choice to make.

"We split up before. That didn't seem to help matters," Erik argues.

"We couldn't have known whether the Sentinel would actually be waiting for us, before," Charles reasons. "Now we know that it will."

Logan says, "There's always gonna be risk where there's a Sentinel on your tail." He sounds like this has become old news to him. Charles supposes that it has. "But we need that jet."

"And we should do a test run, anyways," Hank suggests, "so there aren't any surprises in Paris."

Charles wouldn't bet on the chances of that.

"Charles. I think you will be safer if you stay with me," Erik insists, just as Logan apparently reaches the limit of his patience for dissention among the ranks - or whatever he thinks of it as, after many years at war.

"Think whatever you like, bub," Logan says, face carefully still and voice firm, "but I know what I'm talking about." Charles doesn't think he's imagining that Logan's words become sharp as he adds, "I've been watching out for Charles a lot longer than you."

Their conversation only devolves from there.

If Erik's gaze could melt flesh as well as steel... Charles would fear for Logan's safety. He still does, a bit, when Erik says, "You do behave as though you know one another well in your future. Did _you_ know, Charles, that your so-called protector's bones are made entirely out of _metal_?"

"Erik, stop."

Charles _just_ manages to end the debate without any physical violence coming into play. He doesn't kid himself that it's his powers of persuasion, alone, that do the trick - they _are_ on a time crunch, after all. Just because the Sentinel hadn't beat them to the mansion when they got here, doesn't mean it isn't on its way here as they speak. 

But it helps when Charles promises Erik, "Go with Hank, Erik, and when Logan and I are somewhere safe, I'll delay my next dose of the serum long enough to contact you and prove that I'm alright."

"You don't have to do that, you know," Logan says as they pull out of the mansion's garage in one of Charles's least flashy cars. He looks long and hard at what used to be the neighbor's pickup truck, parked in the front drive, as they pass, but makes no comment on it. "Do shit just to make Magneto happy. I mean, it's a good idea. Means we can check in on him and Hank, too, and see how Hank's "tests" are working out, but-"

"Didn't you say that Erik and I insisted we would need his cooperation, in the future?" Charles asks, as a simple way of explaining the negotiation.

"Yeah. But you didn't say we had to be nice about it," Logan says, straight-faced.

Charles grins. 

Somewhat miraculously, Logan and Charles don't encounter the Sentinel on the trip into town. Or at the airport. Obviously, this isn't a bad thing, but Charles can't help but feel that it's ominous.

The Sentinel came so close to killing him on that dirt road - why would it retreat immediately after? Where would it retreat _to_?

"You were right about it being able to guess what we're up to," Logan says, eyes on the other travelers conducting business near them as they leave the ticket counter. "If it doesn't make a move here, it'll be at that peace summit."

Their flight to France will board in two hours - time Logan suggests they _not_ spend in a crowded terminal.

There's a diner attached to the airport, with both a street and a terminal exit. It's still more crowded than either of them would like, but nowhere near as crowded as the airport proper, especially this late in the evening. Logan prowls into it, studying the face of each and every diner and waitress in view before guiding Charles to a booth in one easily defensible corner.

Charles's face feels hot as he himself avoids the wary or curious eyes of the people who Logan has alarmed, offended, or intrigued with his searching gaze. Not because he cares, necessarily, what they think - nor would he, could Charles read their all too apparent thoughts rather than imagine them.

But it isn't just Logan's demeanor towards strangers that catches attention - so aggressive and suspicious; it's how close he walks to Charles, one hand just brushing the small of Charles's back. Again, Charles couldn't care less how Logan's nearness must look to spectators, but Logan's physical presence can be rather... distracting, even when he isn't looming right behind Charles's shoulder.

Since Cuba, Charles had all but stopped acknowledging his own sexuality. The last man he's had sex with had (albeit accidentally) drastically altered Charles's perception of himself, sexually. And Charles hardly lacked for concerns to focus his energies on, allowing him to avoid the issue altogether.

But then Logan came, and now Charles feels like sex is never far from his thoughts - the theoretics of it if nothing else.

Although, to be fair to himself, Charles supposes that's to be expected when one's sexlife has been revealed as a contributing factor to the human race's continued existence.

"Tell me about them," Charles says after a waitress has taken Logan's order of a cup of coffee, black, and Charles has decided to chance the diner's interpretation of eggs benedict.

"Who?"

Charles almost says, 'My children,' but the oddness of saying those words, even in his head, changes his mind at the last moment.

"The X-Men," Charles says quietly enough that they aren't likely to be overheard. Logan had mentioned them by name when he first tried explaining Charles's "importance" in the future to Charles and Hank.

Logan's face changes, the way it does every time the word comes up. The sight creates a dull ache at the back of Charles's throat that is both uncomfortable and oddly pleasant. This group of people whom Logan claims could never have found one another if not for Charles means so very much to the man. And it hasn't escaped Charles that - outside of Hank and Charles himself - Logan tends to value people from a distance. He'll gladly risk his life to save humanity... but interacting with it is another thing altogether.

"...course, Iceman does most of that, these days. He, Kitty and Pete are all grown up. Or- You know, will be. Jesus... Bobby's not even born yet in '73."

Charles listens to Logan talk about Bobby, Kitty and Pete... "Storm", Scott and Jean with varying degrees of affection, nostalgia and pride. 

Logan says very little about Marie, James and David - perhaps because he picked up on Charles's hesitation at the beginning of their conversation.

"They're your family," Charles sums it all up, at the last. 

He seems to startle Logan, whose face closes up for all of a second before he feigns a casual shrug and sips at his coffee. "They're _our_ family," he says, doing another visual scan of the diner. "Can't say I was looking for that when you took me in, but I know better now than to let it get away."

Charles has rarely missed his powers more than he's appreciated Hank's serum since he began taking it, but this is one of those rare times.

"You've said something like that before," Charles says, as if an intent look and determined voice can do what his mind used to be able thanks to his mutation. "What happened to you. I mean... besides the near end of the world?" Charles's lips twist wryly, acknowledging that, really, that should be enough.

Charles can't shake his suspicion, however, that the war isn't what Logan's talking about when he talks about being put "back together" and letting his family "get away".

"Ancient history, Charles," Logan deflects. But his smirk doesn't quite reach his eyes as he says, "I mean, _future_ history."

Charles doesn't even have to know what it is - he vows to himself, at this instance, that he won't let it happen a second time.

"Or nothing at all," Charles says. "That's why we sent you here, isn't it? To rewrite history?"

"Yeah, you did. Some of it, anyhow."

Logan looks at Charles for a long moment.

"Refill?" their waitress stops by and asks, breaking the tension that settles in as Logan does.

"Yeah, thanks." 

Logan doesn't look away as he answers her.


	9. Chapter 9

Charles feels the first twinge of pain in his back that signals he needs a dose of Hank's serum when it's time to head to the boarding gate for their flight.

Charles begins to rise out of their booth in the diner, and the pain causes him to stumble with a quiet hiss.

"Hey, you okay?" Logan grabs Charles by one elbow and steadies him. 

"Yes, thank you," Charles says. He needs no further assistance, but the furrow between Logan's brows remains until they're out of the diner and can speak more freely.

"Yeah? Then why do you look like your blood pressure just spiked by like a thousand points?"

Charles can't believe they're having this conversation - but such is his life, apparently. "The, uh, matronly looking elderly woman in the booth next to ours had a very loud thought about why I might be walking so gingerly as we left." 

As Charles might have expected, Logan's concern shifts seamlessly into great amusement.

Logan snorts. "Well, good for grandma for having a dirty imagination."

"Easy for you to say," Charles can't quite stop himself from grumbling. He _doesn't_ care what others think of him, but surface thoughts are the first thing that come back when the serum really starts to filter out. They start drifting to him off of the people nearby, and then from an ever greater distance. Then the random bits of memory start to come at him... and they never seem to be _good_ memories. Only the darkest, most emotional, most unsettling flashbacks reach Charles's head without his prompting. "You're not the one that 'grandma' considers 'rather fetching for a perverted hippie'."

Logan laughs out loud. The sound is so surprising and pleasant that it wipes any sign that he'd just been grumbling off of Charles's face.

"The hair does kinda make you look up for anything, Charles," Logan says. He's watching the terminal for the Sentinel's approach, but he spares a fond look in Charles's direction.

Fond and perhaps something else? It's not Charles's _hair_ that Logan's eyes linger on before they look away.

"I wouldn't be so quick to judge if I were you, my friend," Charles says, willing those thoughts to leave him. Charles has done the math - he will be an old man when he and Logan "first" meet, and Logan is in the prime of his life. He must be quite young when Charles "takes him in". A heated look here, a suggestive word there, notwithstanding, Charles has no reason to believe that the more than friendly thoughts he's had about Logan from the beginning would strike the man as anything but unwelcome or awkwardly amusing. "Sideburns are all the rage at the moment, but are they still so popular fifty years in the future?"

"Hey, I didn't say I don't _like_ that hair," Logan says quickly, holding up his hands and smiling at Charles. Then he blows Charles's thoughts right out of the water with a twinkle in his eye and a playful lowering of his voice. "'Up for anything' looks good on you."

Luckily, they reach the boarding gate just about then and Logan has no time to question Charles again about his spiking blood pressure.

Charles spends most of the flight to France with his head tipped back, pretending to sleep while searching the skies for Hank's and Erik's familiar mind; Logan sits between Charles and the aisle. 

All Charles can do under the circumstances is sense whether Hank and Erik are alright, or if they feel as though something has gone wrong, and project the same - but he has to wait until the serum has again completely cycled out of his system to do even that.

"Logan, I've found them," Charles says, with barely time to spare to dose himself so that Logan doesn't have to carry him off of the plane.

"They alright?"

"They aren't distressed," Charles says, and then he opens his eyes. "Well. Hank is no more distressed than he ever is, poor man." Charles is full of fondness and guilt.

Much of his friend's distress, over the past few years, has been thanks to Charles.

"Great. Do what you gotta do. We'll be landing soon."

Charles can't see anything disapproving in Logan's eyes, nor hear it in his voice - but Logan isn't looking directly at him, and Charles is reminded of how Erik had reacted to watching Charles take a dose of the serum.

"You don't like it either, do you?" Charles says. When Logan looks at him at last, Charles explains, 'The serum.' Then he's surprised by the emotion he feels coming off of Logan at the sound of Charles's voice in his head.

"Just not used to it being so quiet all the time," Logan says out loud, seeming to confirm what Charles has wondered before - about the way he uses his powers with the X-men during the war, but there's something else.

"Can I..." Charles reaches out to Logan, with his mind, but without touch to focus his energy - so rarely used these past few years - and sitting so close to Logan...  
Before Logan can answer, or Charles can will himself to hold back, he's slipping into Logan's thoughts - slipping being the operative word.

There is no order to the path Charles finds himself on in Logan's head. He touches upon a memory of Logan, weeping at a grave side, but doesn't stay long enough for Logan to look up from the torches lit at either side of the tombstone. Charles sees a lovely young woman, strands of her long, red hair brushing the backs of Logan's knuckles as she dies on his claws... He feels fingertips against the side of his face and a fragile, almost painful burst of hope, but can't tell who or what Logan associates these remembered sensations with. 

'Don't go there.'

Logan's urgent voice reaches Charles just as he's wrenching himself back from what must be a fantasy. Through Logan's eyes, Charles can see himself, his own flushed face and half-lidded eyes. Logan's hands are fisted in Charles's hair and as his hips snap forward he curls in to kiss Charles's lips-

' _Charles_!'

Charles comes back to himself with a gasp, rocking back in his seat like he's been shoved.

"I'm... sorry. I'm so sorry, my friend, I didn't mean-" he stutters in his hurry to apologize for what he's done.

"It's alright. It's- This just isn't the time to-"

"No, absolutely. I truly apologize," Charles says, mortified and so, so torn.

He would look like to look away from Logan's face, and Logan's visibly alarmed expression, but Charles keeps seeing Logan's reflection in the marble of the tombstone, devastated - and in a pair of obsidian-black eyes, fury and anguish entwined. He keeps hearing what Logan imagines Charles would sound like when he moans, and Logan has a very intuitive imagination-

As he watches Charles watching him, Logan's face transforms with concern. "What did you see?" he asks, like he's afraid of what Charles might say.

That decides Charles's answer for him. "Nothing I could make sense of," Charles says.

Logan doesn't look as though he believes it, but he doesn't argue as Charles finds the strength at last to tear his gaze away. 

Logan provides cover so that Charles can give himself a dose of Hank's serum without any of the nearby passengers seeing.


	10. Chapter 10

They have one day until the peace summit - somewhat less than twenty-four hours to hopefully locate Raven so they don't have to confront her at the Accords, where the Sentinel is bound to be watching. 

"When I contacted her through Cerebro, she was already on the outskirts of France," Charles tells the others. "She's definitely in the city by now."

"I imagine she's securing her way into the Consulate tomorrow," Erik says.

"You told me she got in posing as one of the delegates invited by Trask," Logan says to both Charles and Erik, looking between the two. "But you couldn't say which one."

"So... we track down the delegates and try to figure out which one she's after as well..." Hank suggests. "Then we just hope she makes a move on them while we're watching?"

Hank sounds skeptical, at best, but luckily they have more to go on than he assumes.

"On the train where I spoke to her," Charles shares, "I glimpsed a dictionary sticking out of her bag. Raven's been brushing up on her conversational Lebanese."

Meaning they'll only need to find the delegation from Lebanon and then go from there. 

Logan drops into the armchair nearest Charles's side of the sofa he and Erik are sitting on. "Which of course she knows," Logan mumbles, sounding grudgingly impressed.

"Raven's very resourceful," Hank says, failing to sound as unconcerned as he probably means. He's been pacing the hotel room since they took refuge here.

"Yes. She is," says Erik, in a thoughtful tone Charles isn't sure he trusts. 

"So what do we do?" Hank asks.

Charles has an idea as to what they need to do first, and where to go to have it done quickly.

"Hey... I forgot they used to put these in rooms," Logan says, pulling Charles out of his thoughts.

He's picked up the delicate, sculpted dish that had been sitting on a side table nearby, and he sets it down on the coffee table in the center of the seating area.

"What? Ash trays?" Hank frowns. "Where else would you flick your ashes when you smoke?"

Logan grins, patting down his jacket pockets, presumably for the cigars he obviously keeps in good number on his person. 

"Right?" Logan agrees, although Hank seems lost as to what he may be agreeing to. "Guess the seventies were good for somethin'."

Erik looks at Charles and Charles needn't have powers to read his mind. 'Seriously, Charles. We sent _him_ here to save our future?' Erik's eyes seem to say.

Charles smiles, hoping his expression isn't overly fond.

"Well, first," Charles tells Hank, "we'll need to find out where best to approach the Lebanese delegation..."

"I have a source who may know where the attendees to the summit will be staying," Erik offers, and then adds when Hank and Charles look at him curiously: "How do you think one conducts business when one can't scan the minds of a crowd to learn what it knows?"

While Erik sounds perfectly neutral while he says it, that comment is such a minefield of hot topics, Charles decides to take Erik's word that he can get them the intel they need and moves on.

"Next, we'll need to look less like someone a political delegate on foreign soil really ought to run away from," Charles says wryly. Hank looks down at his bell bottoms, the legs still dusty from the trek he and Erik made from the mansion back to the jet. Logan smirks although he's wearing the same attire he introduced himself to Charles in, and Charles's suit is rumpled from their flight - not to mention, far too casual for any setting where they might meet a delegate to the Peace Accords. 

But Erik raises one brow and says, "You mean, despite the fact that they _really_ ought to run away, as fast as they can?" He's still wearing the clothes he was brought when they broke him out of prison, and - ironically - he's the only one among them who probably doesn't need any sprucing up at all. 

Erik's always looked far too good far too easily, but Charles pushes that thought away.

It's easier to do that when Charles remembers what necessitated such lengths in order to contact his sister in the first place.

"You know Raven better than I these days, Erik," Charles says, trying very hard not to make the words sound like an accusation. "Would running actually help her target?" 

Erik's face sobers immediately. Charles would almost feel sorry if it weren't for the matter of fact way in which Erik answers, "Not at all."

"So you get to give us all makeovers," Logan says, now puffing happily on the lit cigar between his teeth. "Cute. Sure you can handle it?"

Logan is obviously teasing, but Erik - his eyes still on Charles - answers, as if Logan had actually been asking, "Of course he can. I'm not the only one with resources, you know. The man lives in a castle and funds everything our mad scientist here cooks up in that lab of his."

Erik pays no mind to Hank's mildly offended, "Hey!" 

"Charles can always afford to help his friends," Erik says in a deceptively mild tone of voice.

Oh, yes, Erik had definitely been pulling his punches on the plane when they last talked about what Erik's done and what Charles didn't, while Erik was getting himself thrown in prison and most of his friends captured.

Obviously, Erik's feeling much less forgiving at the moment, and Charles can't say he wouldn't welcome the return to status quo under other circumstances.

Right now, they have one assassin to catch and another to kill - or at least avoid for the time being. 

Charles gets on the phone and arranges them a tailor.

 

Erik indeed has a source who can tell them where the Lebanese delegation is staying during their visit to Paris, complete with room numbers, and _would_ if Erik hadn't been imprisoned for a very high-profile crime and then mysteriously freed the day before.

Erik gets the source to agree to meet with a couple of mutants - just not himself - so once again Charles must watch Hank and Logan head off on their own while Charles remains with Erik.

He can't shake the suspicion that Erik hadn't tried particularly hard to convince the source of his innocence. And it doesn't help that Logan looks as though he is similarly suspicious when he turns to Charles, at the door, and says quietly enough that only Charles can hear, "Be careful, alright?"

"You too, my friend," Charles says.

Only minutes after they've been left alone, Erik says, "How did he come to be one of your X-men, I wonder."

"Pardon?" Charles asks, although of course there is only one X-man that Erik could be talking about.

"Logan." The way Erik says his name causes Charles's sense of unease to grow. "He said himself he isn't one of your students. How did he come to join our cause?"

' _Our_ ' cause, Erik says, and Charles feels it as a dull ache in his chest.

"He says the X-men came to him," Charles reveals, unable to think - at the moment - why he shouldn't.

Erik is sitting in the arm chair where Logan had smoked his cigar, idly moving the cigarette lighter Logan left behind back and forth across the polished surface of the coffee table. Charles returns to his seat on the sofa.

"Does he?" Erik says. And then before Charles can make anything of that, he continues, "Well, of course. You have always had the tendency to take in strays."

"Erik..."

The lighter stills in the center of the coffee table - that is the only warning Charles gets that Erik is about to move, and then he's straddling Charles's lap on the sofa.

Charles draws in a breath, and that's all he's had the time to do when Erik's hands frame Charles's face and Erik, eyes bright with intent, leans in so close Charles can feel Erik's breath on his lips.

"Erik-"

"Or is he the one who's taken something in this case?" Erik asks quietly, almost as if to himself.

Erik kisses Charles in lieu of waiting for an answer.

'Undisciplined' Charles has called himself - but he does _try_. His hands fist on Erik's shoulders, ready to shove the other man away. He holds Erik at bay, the strain no doubt showing in the scowl on his face.

But Charles doesn't actually shove Erik off of him. Erik kisses him; Charles kisses back. When Erik pushes into Charles's mouth with his tongue, Charles's hands go slack, and then he's holding Erik rather than holding him back. 

Erik groans and Charles shudders at the sound. It's both as if the past ten years never happened, and as if nothing came before them. The pleasure of being touched - Erik's hands tugging Charles's shirt untucked and wandering underneath - is made bittersweet by the memory of how fleeting the pleasure of Erik's attentions had been the last time they'd gotten together. The day after their last liaison, Charles had followed Erik onto that beach in Cuba and then-

"Erik. Stop..."

His own, sharp moan as Erik's teeth nip at the curve of his jaw, beneath the scruff of his beard, startles Charles back to himself.

"Erik, we can't," Charles tries again when Erik only moves his lips further down Charles's throat.

Charles swallows hard and has to try very hard to remember _why_ they can't, exactly...

But Erik's words against his skin help him out with that, effectively. "Of course, we can, Charles," Erik says, his voice gone rough and hot with the things Charles is sure he'd be thinking at Charles - perhaps still is - if only Charles could hear him. "We must, mustn't we, if we're to give the future its heroes?"

There's enough humor in Erik's voice, that Charles could take the words as a joke, if he dared. But just the thought that Erik's renewed interest might be based in-

"The future is hardly set in stone, Erik," Charles says, and he knows by the way Erik immediately stiffens that some form of his thoughts is obvious in his tone.

Erik pulls back - just enough to see Charles's face, to see his eyes.

"I didn't mean-"

"Didn't you?" It isn't so hard, actually, Charles finds, to resist Erik while he's speaking from his heart - so long as Charles keeps in mind how differently he and Erik feel about so many things.

"And if I _did_?" Steel starts to creep back into Erik's voice as if he's waved a hand and drawn it to him. He leans back on his haunches, still straddling Charles, but no longer bringing their bodies so close to mingling. "Are you telling me you actually see something _wrong_ in my not minding that we are, apparently, destined to be together?" 

The memory of Logan's voice on the plane flits through Charles's head. ' _Fuck fate_...'

Charles says firmly, "Wouldn't you, if _destiny_ were the only reason I let you fuck me?"

"'Destiny' seems to be the only reason you won't," Erik says coolly. He rises and stares down at Charles with a very different kind of heat than had marked his gaze a moment earlier. "That and your goddamned pride. Just because you've found out what will happen before it became your conscious decision to _make_ it happen-"

"You think I would _decide_ to make a child with you?" Charles asks, coming to his feet as well. "After everything that's happened?" Charles shouts, without actually meaning to. "You took away everything that I cared about!"

"I never meant to hurt you." They're lovely words. Even Erik's bland, almost absentminded delivery doesn't change that. Erik's eyes betray all of the emotion that his carefully schooled face and tone do not. "You understand that," he says. "You must. You forgive me. We fight for our family together..."

Charles can't argue against all of that - he doesn't want to. He has no doubt that he does forgive Erik eventually. He may as well have already - Charles wants so badly to believe that Erik values his forgiveness as much as Erik seems to in this moment; Charles is just too angry, still, to say that he has.

And Charles does understand that Erik didn't mean to injure him... and then leave him to that injury. Erik didn't mean to help drive the wedge between Charles and his sister even deeper... He just never thought how what he _meant_ to do might affect Charles, until after he'd done it. Or he deemed his intentions reason enough to let Charles's chips fall where they may.

"We fight for the same side, Erik," Charles says, "but we are not together." Charles can't but think of the way Logan had spoken of the X-Men in that diner. "Families value one another more than the success of their own personal goals. If it came down to saving me _or_ gaining an advantage in the war- If Logan had told us that my children will _lessen_ our chances of winning, would you still wish to be their father? Would you still wish to protect me?"

Erik opens his mouth, but Charles will not allow him to make promises that perhaps neither of them would believe.

"How can you expect me to 'not mind' that any child you and I might conceive would, ultimately, mean no more to you than any other tool you might use?" Charles demands. He thinks back on Shaw's death, Shaw's pain becoming _Charles's_ pain as Charles held Shaw still for Erik's torture. "No more than me," he finishes quietly. 

"Charles..."

"Even if the children are yours," Charles says, ending the conversation - for the time - quite definitely. "That doesn't mean that they should be."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had hoped to bring the Sentinel back in this chapter... but couldn't quite get him there. Don't worry... he's lurking just around the corner ;)


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me ;p

Erik's source gives them the name of the exclusive hotel where the delegation from Lebanon is staying in Paris for the duration of the Accords, and a bit more reconnaissance gives them the information that the delegates hadn't exactly _stayed_ there the previous night. The night club where they spent their evening - and likely would again - is fairly high-end, so Charles has his tailor (for a fairly obscene amount of money) fit him, Erik, Logan and Hank with attire appropriate for what Logan calls "clubbing".

Seeing Hank all decked out in an outfit that would pull nicely if Hank ever braved the dating scene manages to take Charles's mind off of the tension that's settled into the hotel suite since his confrontation with Erik - for a little while.

There's far too much of it to avoid for long, however. Erik has been a distant storm cloud since they argued - angry but quiet - and Logan took one look at him and Charles, occupying their separate spaces at opposite ends of the suite when he and Hank returned, and became suspicious.

"Everything alright in here?" he asked. He said nothing when Charles brushed off his concern with a vague "Fine" and then prompted Hank to share what they'd learned from Erik's source. 

Later, though, something caught Logan's eye as the tailor measured Charles's chest. 

"Hey, wait a minute..." 

Charles was just about to put his shirt back on. He'd felt Logan's gaze on him before, but he'd ignored it - as had the tailor and his staff, occasionally giving Charles that look service professionals have perfected as if to say, 'I am only acknowledging this so as to assure you that I will not acknowledge it any further.'

But then Logan was at Charles's side, lifting Charles's chin.

Charles's heart thumped. "What are you-" But Charles knew what Logan was looking at that second, as Logan brushed his thumb over the curve of Charles's jaw - right where Erik had worried Charles's skin with his teeth.

Charles looked up at him, but Logan's eyes had already moved to Charles's collarbone. He knew Erik had marked him there as well.

There had been a flash of emotion on Logan's face, and then it had been gone, though Logan's smirk looked oddly stiff as he said, "Guess you two _didn't_ try to kill each other while I was gone. What happened after that? Lover's spat?"

Charles felt guilty when Logan looked at him like that, which is of course ridiculous. He owes Logan no explanations about what he did or did _not_ do with Erik while they were alone together, as much as he appreciates the way Logan has listened to him worry over Erik and what they might be to one another.

Still, Charles found himself saying, quietly - so as not to be heard by the tailor and his staff, watching from the other side of the room - "Nothing happened. We simply had a bit of a... disagreement about whether or not something should." It didn't occur to Charles, until later, how this must have sounded to Logan. He just called Jean Rene back over to take Logan's measurements.

Logan's been watching Erik with a careful, angry eye ever since.

It's almost a relief when they get to leave the suite and focus on their task, even though that task is to get between Raven and a target while possibly encountering the Sentinel.

Not that the club itself offers any reason to feel relieved - it is packed with young adults, an endless supply of innocent faces for either Raven or the Sentinel to mimic. The music that drives them seems to blare from every surface of the lavishly decorated space - made to look, Charles must suppose, like a classic Parisian tea room, except with flashing lights, a massive liquor bar, and a huge, faceted disco bar hung off-center above the polished dance floor.

"Charles and I will look for our delegates over here," Erik says, motioning towards the freestanding bar and the crowd of dancers writhing on the dance floor that surrounds it. "One of you should do a sweep of the booths in the back." There are also the scattering of gaming tables to the right.

"Yeah," Logan says, and it's immediately clear that he is _not_ agreeing with Erik. "That's not happening. _You_ search the dance floor. Charles and I will take the booths."

"Uh, I could-" Hank even offers an alternative to the unrest brewing in both Logan's, and now Erik's eyes, but Erik speaks over him.

"Raven is much more likely to agree to speak with me than with Charles if he approaches her with a mutant she's never met before," Erik says. Out of the corner of Charles's eye, he sees Hank raise his hands and shake his head, and he reaches over to squeeze his friend's shoulder in commiseration. 

"I do think it would help if Raven saw Erik and I together," Charles tells Logan, feeling almost urged to apologize.

He isn't taking sides, however. There are no sides between them all - not now. For once, everyone has a common enemy, haven't they?

"Right." Logan looks far from convinced, but his unhappiness with Charles's decision wars with his apparent desire to take Charles's lead for only a moment. Then he says, "You catch any hint of the Sentinel-"

"Oh, you'll know," Erik promises.

Logan looks at him, then at Charles, and back, then nods. Whatever he looks like he might say to Charles further he keeps to himself, slapping Hank on the back instead.

"Beast," Logan prompts, with a motion for Hank to follow him.

Charles and Erik make their way through the dancers with careful eyes. Charles thought that perhaps they would split up at least enough to wade through the crowd in a less obtrusive fashion. But Erik sticks close to him, one hand at Charles's back - close enough that when Charles catches a flash of blonde hair, the curve of a pale shoulder, and says, "I think that's Raven..." Erik hears.

"Follow her."

Charles nods, but he's already leading them in that direction. 

His heart is hammering. It's been so very long since he's spoken with his sister in person... He'd secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) given up hope, before all of this, that he ever would again.

Erik leans in even closer, from behind Charles, to speak next to Charles's ear.

"What you said, Charles," Erik begins, sounding somehow hesitant, even with his voice raised as it is to be heard over the music and the other dancers, "about me... valuing people less than I should..."

"Don't worry about that now," Charles says. This near to Raven, and to perhaps ending a separation that never should have begun, Charles regrets how harsh he'd been in his estimation of Erik, even if he'd only meant to be honest.

"I just want you to know that you were wrong," Erik continues all the same. "I do value the people I- the people I love..."

Charles spares a glance back at Erik, at his somber face. 

"Erik..."

A tall gentleman, and his petite dance partner, pass between Charles and - Charles is sure now - his sister, so Charles returns his focus to her direction, hoping not to lose his line of sight.

Raven's not quite at the center of the dance floor. Charles isn't entirely sure what she's doing. She isn't dancing with anyone - perhaps she's headed to the bar... slowed, as Charles and Erik are, by the throb of the crowd.

But Erik's still talking, and too late Charles realizes how very off Erik's voice has become. He sounds so sad, so sorry. And Charles has never known him to drag out an apology. He's never known Erik to apologize at all.

"I don't know what I would do if the choice came between you and the good of our world," Erik is saying. "I cannot imagine the world being a better place without you in it. But luckily that isn't a choice I have to make. You _are_ the good of our world, Charles. And if you can believe nothing else good of me, believe this: I _will_ protect you. Whatever the cost."

Charles's unease grows and grows, a chill passing along his spine.

Raven has stopped. She stands staring at someone at the bar.

Charles takes this as an opportunity to face Erik fully. The look in Erik's shining eyes stops his breath. "Erik, what are you planning?" Then he sees that Erik has a gun.

"I'm sorry, Charles," Erik says - those three words Charles had sometimes dreamed of hearing, in the early days of their separation - and he sounds like he means them.

"Raven!" he yells, so loudly that Charles sees Raven's head turn in his peripheral vision.

"Erik, no!" Charles shouts, as Erik's gun snaps up.

Charles tackles Erik to the ground, wrapping one fist around the wrist of Erik's gunhand and taking it down too. People scream and begin to flee the dance floor all around them.

Erik's shot's gone long. Charles looks up from the sprawl of their bodies on the dance floor to see that Raven is still standing, uninjured, staring at them now as if trying to grasp what she's seeing.

"I'm so sorry," Erik repeats, more quietly, voice uneven. And Charles's heart stops as Erik raises his free hand. 

Charles can't even find the wind in his lungs to protest as Erik slashes his hand through the air and across the dance floor, the massive, mirror-panneled disco ball directly above Raven's head unmoors itself from the ceiling, taking chunks of plaster with it. It barrels down at its target like an ungainly missile, and Charles watches in horror as Raven crumples beneath it.


	12. Chapter 12

" _No_!" Far too late, Charles recovers his breath and screams - mind's eye stuck on the way Raven's head had snapped to the side, at an impossible angle, as the disco ball came crashing down upon her.

Fear, fury and anguish roil through him, and apparently whatever dampening effect the serum has on Charles's powers is no match for these. 

"Cha-" Erik's voice chokes off in his throat, and as Charles stumbles to his feet, Erik moving to follow, Erik's body seizes. He flops onto his back as if flung there. 

Charles barely notices. " _Raven!_ " 

Charles's heart is in his throat. He knows that his sister is dead. She must be. There is no way Erik had not broken her neck.

" _Cha...rles_ ," Erik gasps, writhing on the floor, but Charles forces himself to walk closer to the wreck of the disco ball and the body twisted unnaturally beneath it.

The body that twitches before Charles's eyes. As he watches in wonder, the mess of broken glass, twisted metal and shattered plaster that covers Raven's fallen form shifts, and Raven sits up in the middle of it all.

At the same time, at the other end of the dance floor, Raven stands on the edge of the panicking clubgoers that haven't yet fled the premises.

She is unharmed, hands folded over her mouth and eyes wide. "Charles!" she shouts.

His mistake is instantly obvious. The Sentinel shudders and it no longer looks like Charles's sister, sitting in the remains of the disco ball.

It's robotic form is scuffed and imperfect. Tiny pieces of mirror have embedded themselves in its armor plating like glitter. One of its glowing eyes glows dimmer than the other, its eye piece cracked open (might this be where Charles shot it?) The other side of its head seems to have been dented in slightly.

But its ability to transform seems not to have been diminished at all. It raises one arm - its hand still Raven's, painted nails, jeweled rings and all - and that hand becomes a weapon it hasn't tried on Charles before, the barrel about as wide in diameter as a man's fist.

There is a slight whine as the weapon powers up. All of this happens in seconds, and there is no way Charles can clear the Sentinel's line of sight before it fires upon him.

Then a wall of muscle launches itself at Charles and tackles him head on. Charles grabs instinctively at his attacker, but when his hands fist in the front of Logan's tailored jacket, Charles realizes he's actually being saved.

He hears what must be the sound of the Sentinel's weapon discharging, and the force with which Logan tackled him doubles as Logan shouts wordlessly in pain. Heat has enveloped them, as have the scents of burning hair and flesh.

"Logan..."

"Hold on!"

Logan's arms are around him when they hit the ground, several feet from where he'd been standing, so Charles is not crushed between Logan and the dance floor when they land. Logan twists so that his shoulder takes the brunt of the impact and then rolls, holding Charles to him as the world seems to spin.

The Sentinel shoots at them again. The shot misses them by a hair and burns away a chunk of the bar nearby, igniting the shattered bottles of liquor it touches with its blast.

When Logan rolls off of Charles, Charles can see just how dangerous that blast is to a human body, Logan's remarkable healing powers notwithstanding. Logan moves stiffly as he crouches protectively in front of Charles, claws fanned out and held defensively.

Much of Logan's back and shoulders has been reduced to exposed muscle, and considering the rate at which the tissue is doubling under Charles's watch, Charles is sure the Sentinel's blast ate right down to Logan's impervious bones. 

"Logan, we have to run!"

Charles crawls into a crouch behind Logan, and over Logan's shoulder he sees what's kept the Sentinel from firing at them a third time. 

They'd heard a deep, metallic thud only seconds ago, and now it seems that this had been the sound of a metal table, and what looks to be at least two of its chairs, pinning the Sentinel to one wall. Another knot of twisted metal has attached itself to the end of the Sentinel's weapon, somehow clogging the mechanism? Charles isn't sure why the Sentinel doesn't blast right through the obstruction, although perhaps it is too distracted at the moment to do so.

Hanging from a nearby light fixture, Hank - in full "Beast" form - is taking turns with Erik, batting at the Sentinel's exposed head or flinging yet more pieces of altered metal at it, respectively.

"The jet!" Charles reminds Logan, grabbing him by an uninjured part of his shoulder. "We need to get back to the jet!" 

Erik's metal will not hold the Sentinel much longer. Even now, Charles can hear Erik warning Hank and Raven, who Charles cannot see, to run. 

On the jet, there will be no innocent humans who could get caught in the crossfire when the Sentinel starts firing on them again. Right now, Charles can hear clubgoers who could not get out fast enough weeping and shrieking from where they've hid. And how soon until Parisian authorities respond to the disturbance?

Of course, without Erik, their plan involving the jet won't work.

Which isn't the only reason Charles does what he does, but it is the one he will give if he lives long enough to be asked. After everything, Charles is certain he cannot be blamed for denying any other motivation for trying to keep Erik alive.

"Can you get us to the street safely?" Charles asks Logan.

The club is on the top floor of the narrow, three-story building they're in, and when Logan looks back at him, Charles nods to the window in the wall not quite directly behind them.

"Shit..." Logan says - which isn't technically a 'no'.

"Erik! Get to the jet!" Charles calls out as he moves from behind the protective shield of Logan's body. 

He's already running for the window. 

The whine of the Sentinel's weapon is muffled by the metal encasing it, but Charles can still hear it, and judges the time he has to throw himself out of the path of its discharge when the Sentinel opens fire.

Erik shouts his name. The Sentinel fires, and Charles throws himself to the left, stiff legs and aching back pulling a groan from his lips.

The Sentinel's blast hits the window Charles had been racing towards, and a second later, Logan grabs him in much the same way he had when he'd tackled Charles off of the dance floor.

With a growl, Logan propels them out of the gaping hole the Sentinel's put in the side of the building. Charles hangs onto Logan's neck, and Logan uses his claws to direct and slow their fall as best he can, ripping deep gouges into the building wherever his claws find purchase.

They reach ground level not a moment too soon, flattening themselves against the side of the building as the Sentinel blasts the street curb right in front of them from the remains of the window up above.

Again there are bystanders running and screaming, and potentially putting themselves in the line of fire, in the confusion - and from what Logan's said about how the Sentinel senses mutations, Charles knows they can't use the crowd as cover without endangering all of them. 

One thing is certain, Charles thinks, as he and Logan too try to put some distance between themselves and the Sentinel: if the Lebanese delegation had been in that club when the fighting started, they're going to have a much different reaction to Bolivar Trask's blueprints when he presents his idea for the Sentinel program at the Peace Accords than they had the first time around.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: I'm rating this chapter Mature just to be safe. And I don't know if I do the Mature content justice, honestly :p Bear with me.

The signs have been there since Charles took Erik down with a thought: the serum isn't working as it should. Whether it's all of the adrenaline pumping through his blood, or all of the physical exertion he's been put through - whatever the reason, it's become so painful for Charles to run, that he's sweating and wincing with every step.

The upside of this is that running from the Sentinel becomes easier when Charles can pick up on the panic and confusion that follows the monster wherever it goes. The downside is that, once the numbness has begun in Charles's toes, it becomes clear that they aren't going to make it back to the hangar where they left the jet. Nor can they can make it back to the hotel suite, where a shiny, new vial of Hank's serum awaits.

The _police nationale_ actually try to apprehend _them_ at one point, and while Charles regrets the consequence this has for the unsuspecting humans, it gives him and Logan the opportunity they need to lose the Sentinel and find a place to hide.

This place just so happens to be a closed boutique with a vulnerable rear entry - vulnerable, at least, to Logan's claws.

Logan breaks them into the building, Charles clinging to the wall next to the boutique's heavy back door by the time he's done. Charles is too tired and in too much pain to care that they've now committed a crime for which they could be rightfully arrested.

He's too tired and in pain, in fact, to care when Logan scoops Charles up and carries him into the shop like a groom carrying his bride across a threshold.

"Kid, you project the funniest shit when you're worn out," Logan says in a teasing tone, but Charles can sense the anxiety underneath his careful levity.

"I'll be fine..." Charles musters despite the sharp cry he let out when Logan lifted him and his heavy breathing now. "I'll try to contact Hank... Tell him to retrieve a dose of the serum from our suite and bring it here."

"Can you do that in the middle of the city without Cerebro?"

"If I can't, we'll call a taxi as soon as the pain has passed," Charles says as evenly as he can manage. The reality, though, is that he's certain this is what they will do, as he consciously reaches out with his mind to the others all around him - and so many seem to leap into existence at his touch that Charles shouts and curls up in Logan's arms.

"Shit... I got you, Charles. Hold on," Logan says. Charles feels the words rumble in Logan's chest, bare beneath Charles's cheek. Logan shed the tattered remains of his shirt and suit jacket shortly after they left the club.

Logan carries Charles through the back of the boutique to the storefront. There is nowhere that Logan can lay Charles down where Charles can lie comfortably, so Logan stops at the rack nearest the rear of the shop - farthest away from the boutique's curtained windows and double doors - and begins tugging clothes off of their hangers and throwing them onto a pile on the floor. Logan lays Charles down on these. 

There's nothing to take Charles's mind off the return of his powers, the loss of feeling in his legs or the pain in his back now as there had been in the truck, what feels like ages ago. And having the serum flush out of his system on an adrenaline rush, as opposed to having it cycle out gradually, is a very different experience. A much less pleasant experience, to understate things completely.

Charles doesn't know whether to grab his head or his back; both have presently become similarly intense sources of anguish.

"What can I do?" Logan asks. He's knelt down at Charles's side, and Charles fixes his gaze on Logan's worried face, to anchor his mind on what his eyes can see - not his mind. "I gotta be able to do something, Chuck."

"Nothing..." 'Anything,' Charles thinks.

There's literally nothing that can be done for Charles's back, seeing as Logan can't reach inside of Charles and soothe his severed nerves as they separate without Hank's serum to bind them.

No sooner than Charles thinks this, does Logan abandon his intention to roll Charles onto his side or his stomach so that he can massage Charles's back. 

Charles almost asks him to do it anyway - as sure as the movement would be to hurt, it would be something to distract him from the flood of sensations buffeting his faltering shields. 

"I'm not gonna hurt you, Charles," Logan says.

"There's... so many-" Charles tries to explain, instinctually attempting to talk over and around the voices speaking, screaming, _whimpering_ inside his head - even as he realizes that Logan cannot hear them. "I need a diversion..."

'Those big hands on me... that should do the trick,' Charles thinks before he can force himself not to. 

The thought is only half in jest, although there was a time Charles wouldn't have dreamed of propositioning someone in such a way - much less under such circumstances.

"Not like this, Charles," is Logan's response, and he almost sounds like he means it.

Except-

Charles has barely finished projecting when an image blossoms inside of Logan's mind, so vivid that it drowns out everything else. 

It's another fragment of the fantasy Charles glimpsed during their flight to France. He feels himself mouthing at a patch of Logan's skin - an apparent hotspot at the base of Logan's throat - and experiences the low growl that rumbles up out of Logan's chest as if it had come from his own. 

" _Touch me, Logan_ ," fantasy Charles says, needy and demanding, and Charles must again credit Logan's imagination. He doesn't think he's ever sounded that undone, speaking out loud to a lover. 

Logan has hardly spoken when Charles reaches for him. 

"Then tell me to stop..." Charles says out loud, trapping the mental voice pleading for exactly the opposite inside of his own head. Logan's beard is rough beneath his palms.   
"Fuck..."

Maybe it's how good even that much positive, physical contact feels right now in contrast to the psionic pain Charles is battling - his pleasure escapes the effort Charles makes to conceal it, spilling over into his connection with Logan's mind. Maybe it's that Charles's voice sounds more fit for pleading than promises, however hard Charles tries.

Whatever the reason Logan gives so easily, letting Charles draw their mouths together, when he could so easily bat Charles away, he doesn't seem bothered by his decision for long.

Charles feels Logan's _confusiondoubtworry_ for all of a moment, and then they kiss, and there's nothing more coming from Logan's direction but a sensation of rightness and heat. 

A thought flits through Logan's head - something about 'too damned long' - but Charles can't catch it. He can't focus on any thought, even his own - which was entirely the point, wasn't it? Logan groans into their kiss - they groan into one another - and that becomes the only sound Charles can hear.

Logan's mouth is every bit as hard and hungry and commanding as _Charles_ had fantasized, but surprisingly careful as well. As their mouths and hands roam, Charles feels swept away, unmoored - just like he'd wanted - but he never gets the sense that he is entirely out of control. Logan is too attentive to him for that.

Trust in a lover isn't something Charles has never felt before; he trusts perhaps too easily. But to have that trust returned...

'Whatever you need, Charles...' Logan thinks at him, when Logan puts some space between their bodies in able to work at undoing Charles's belt, and in the brief lessening of physical contact, Charles's powers threaten to recapture his attention. A mind down the street is mired in clinical depression; another, two stories up, radiates frustration and rage...

Charles has flinched back from them, instinctively seeking the safe haven of a calmer and more familiar mind. Er- the one other lover Charles has had who knew about his powers, had reacted with anything but welcome the one time Charles had attempted to touch his mind while also making love to his body. 

But Logan encourages him. "Anything, remember?" Logan says out loud. 

"Not that," Charles tells him before their lips meet again. It's enough that he coerced Logan into becoming physical with him; he will not impose upon Logan's obvious affection for him any further.

Or he wouldn't... except that Logan thinks, 'I miss hearing you inside me, Chuck,' and reaches between Charles's legs, under his clothes, at the same time.

As Logan's wide, rough palm wraps around him and Logan's tongue again slides against Charles's own, Charles moans. He slips inside Logan's mind almost as an afterthought - not seeking for anything, simply _being_. Thoughts and memories brush by him but only the most immediate take any real form. Charles studies none of them closely, focusing instead on Logan's responses, which are as obvious outside of Logan's head as in. 

Logan's breath, warm and heavy on Charles's skin, stutters. He groans. He presses his body against Charles, and Charles has limited feeling now just below his hips, but it's enough that he can feel the considerable bulge of Logan's erection through their trousers.

"I want to touch you as well," Charles pants into Logan's shoulder, tasting the salty skin there. 

He knows firsthand how badly Logan wants this - a chorus of lurid thoughts spark off in Logan's mind at Charles's words. Charles's hands fumble at the fastenings of Logan's trousers in his haste as the thoughts wash over him.

But Logan says, "Are you sure you can-"

"I think I can manage at least this much."

Charles takes Logan into his hand, hard and hot, and it's impossible to say who makes which noise of satisfaction. At least to Charles, their pleasure is indivisible.

"Fuck... Charles..." Charles hears him, with his mind and without, and he bucks into Logan's tight fist.

"Logan, god..."

The act of giving and receiving pleasure while so openly linked - and through the will of both sides of the connection - is the most intimate experience Charles believes he has had in his life. The further he explores it, the deeper he and Logan descend into bliss, the more he is sure of it. 

There is even a moment - indefinable afterwards, and over so quickly that Charles could almost think he imagined it - when Charles feels as though he and Logan have switched places, and instead of being warmly ensconced inside of his lover's mind, it's as if Logan's somehow burrowed down inside of _his_.

They climax simultaneously - he with a wordless cry, Logan with a low, loud groan, and the repetition of Charles's name at the beginning and end of his thoughts.

Charles has never literally blacked out during sex before. That he does so almost fully dressed, during a hurried exchange of handjobs, could speak to how long it's been since Charles has exchanged _anything_ sexual with another person. But it feels like more than that. 

Especially when it seems that he isn't the only one. By the time Charles has come to, Logan has tidied them up (Charles cringes when he thinks of the poor shopkeeper whose merchandise he and Logan have rendered unfit for sale) and lain down at Charles's side. 

Logan is asleep, his breathing deep and low. Charles gently removes himself from Logan's mind, to leave the man to his sleep in peace, though the urge to remain is almost irresistible.

Charles studies Logan's face instead. So close, and relaxed in sleep, it's even more obvious how very handsome a face it is. And Charles would never have seen it, have been given the gift of seeing behind it, had it not been for the children he may now never have. 

' _Fuck fate..._ ' Logan had said. It's becoming more and more clear to Charles that his choice is nowhere near so simple.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait for an update :p Back to school means less time to write!

It would be unwise were they to stay in the shop until sunrise - to be reported for breaking and entering, among other things. Luckily, though it hardly feels 'lucky' to Charles, _waking_ has not been the problem Charles has had with sleeping since the events in Cuba - whenever he hasn't been heavily dosed with Hank's serum.

Satiation allows Charles a brief period of actual, restful sleep. Exhaustion allows him to fitfully doze in and out of consciousness for a short while more. But well before they must clear out of the boutique, Charles is fully awake and waiting when Logan begins to rouse as well.

Charles wonders if Logan's conditioned himself, as a necessity of war, to sleep only in short intervals, or if he can sense Charles watching him in his sleep.

Charles won't be surprised if he can. Charles knows now that Logan's mutations are even more remarkable than he'd been led to believe.

Logan opens his eyes. Lying the way that they are, he and Charles are facing one another when Charles feels his momentary disorientation fade into understanding and relief.

Charles would wait for the smile he can feel building inside of Logan, before he disturbs the comfortable silence that fills the dark shop, but he can't keep the words to himself any longer. 

"How old are you, Logan?"

Charles is projecting a feeling of calm at Logan, so that Logan doesn't misinterpret the urgency in his voice as anger, but it takes only a moment to realize that he needn't. 

"Guess what you saw made a little more sense this time around, huh?" Logan says easily. If he's upset that Charles may have seen more on the plane than he let on, Logan doesn't sound it.

"You're here," is Charles's admittedly less than sensible reply. "I mean, not just from the future. 1973 was once your present as well."

The thoughts Charles had caught, unavoidably, while he and Logan were so intimately linked - the memories that brushed by him - have raised many questions. But one thing is clear: the things Charles saw in Logan's mind the second time around had not been idle imaginings or fantasies. They make Charles wonder if he hadn't been too quick to dismiss certain things he'd seen in Logan's head before as imaginary.

"Yeah... it was." Logan stares and stares at him. As if he's not sure what to say in the obvious path that Charles's mind is taking, or what he should.

It frustrates Charles to no end, in this moment of revealation, when Logan has never seemed particularly shy about saying what's on his mind before.

"You lied to me," Charles says, doing nothing to mask the accusation in his voice this time. "You said you'd no idea who I'd- who the father of my children might be."

"I told you what you needed to hear," Logan says, sounding much more convincingly apologetic than he actually has the right. He lifts himself up on one elbow, and Charles frowns, not sensing the move to be tactical, but not appreciating being loomed over in this instance all the same.

Or- not _wanting_ to appreciate being loomed over. Damn his luck that the two most infuriating men Charles has ever met are also the two he has found himself too drawn to to entirely resist.

"And I didn't... lie, exactly," Logan is saying all the while. "I won't be around for a while yet. Past me, I mean... And you never actually came out and named any names."

But Logan has very strong suspicions, that is clear. Charles could learn these so easily. He could drop the tattered shields he's erected since the serum passed fully through his body, and dive right back into Logan's thoughts - perhaps Logan would even let him.

Ultimately, Charles is a coward, and that is all that stands between him and the truth. He's afraid to open himself back up to the minds that seem - to him - to be crowded all around him, just waiting for Charles to let down his guard so they can attack.

Perhaps Charles is even afraid of Logan's answer.

So instead of coming right out and asking, 'Are you the father?' he says, "I asked you if Erik was the father. I'd convinced myself that there could be no one else. I might have-"

"What all did you see, Charles?"

Logan interrupts Charles before he can really begin to complain about Logan's keeping things from him, but it's the sudden spike of Logan's emotions - too sharp and sudden for Charles to entirely ignore - that cuts him off.

That heat shows itself in Logan's eyes - is clear in Logan's voice. It's only now that Charles can _feel_ it in Logan that he can see where it comes from.

Charles remembers the images he glimpsed on the plane - a gravestone, the woman, a gentle touch and a revelation. Had _he_ given Logan that feeling of happy surprise?

"We were friends, and then..." Charles tries to make sense of it all, in words, but he's having a difficult time doing that even in his thoughts.

Those memories Charles had dismissed as fantasy... he knows now that they were, indeed, memories. But how can that be? In Logan's memories of making love to Charles, Charles is still a young man. But there are other memories Logan considers important - that he holds, deep inside his mind - in which Charles is much older and he and Logan have just met. 

The lovely redhead - _Jean_ , Logan calls her - is, similarly, a paradox. Logan simultaneously loves, mourns, fears, and hates her. On the plane, Charles had thought maybe that the gravestone Logan had been weeping beside was Jean's. But after piecing together the lust-shrouded images he's seen since then, the stray thoughts he's heard in Logan's head... with the fierce protectiveness and affection Charles has long sensed from Logan and has now experienced intimately-

"And then I died," Charles says, feeling strangely disconnected from the words.

There's knowing that someone - _something_ \- will actively try to kill him throughout his future, and then there's knowing that the something will actually succeed.

"It doesn't stick," Logan says, before Charles can worry the thought further. He can't fathom how _death_ might not "stick", but Logan gives him no time to try. "But we didn't know that right away."

Logan radiates that calm confidence Charles has come to associate with the man - but Charles can see now, too, the traces of Logan's younger self that still remain. In Logan's memories, he is wilder, cagier, with all of the same passion but none of the patience. 

Logan says, "I told you my plan coming back here was to save you and worry about all the rest afterward. Well, I meant it. I've watched you die once already, Charles. I'm not doing it again. Thing is, I had to get you and Erik to work together to make that plan happen, and I couldn't do that if I told you both the whole story. What I know of it, anyway."

"And that doesn't sound ominous," Charles interjects - more than anything in an attempt to chase back some of the tension building with Logan's intense words.

One day he will know how he came to inspire such intensity - in Logan if not all of his "X-Men" - but today he is confused. Perhaps more than ever.

Logan touches his face, as he had at that roadside petrol station back at the beginning of this adventure. 

"I'm not gonna lie... there's a lot of bad waiting in the future," Logan tells Charles. "But we got some good coming to us too."

He sounds like he's trying to convince the both of them.

As for Charles, that one word - 'we' - does help a bit.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has been in hiatus for so long, I'm sure most readers have deemed it abandoned and moved on. However, behold! It lives again! My eternal gratitude to Gerec for inspiration, motivation, and support - and to anyone else who hasn't given up on this story. Hopefully what I have in store for it will not disappoint after such an unforgivably long wait!

Charles _does_ work up the nerve to do what has to be done - to lower his shields long enough to seek out Hank and tell him that he himself and Logan are both alright. 

He’s almost prepared for a riot of minds to assault him with their many fears, idle musings, complaints and desires... Though he hasn’t gone for very long without Hank’s serum since discovering its life-giving effects, Charles does know that blocking the din from rummaging about in his brain gets easier with time, and with renewed practice. The serum has now cycled fully out of Charles’s system, so with a more or less full night’s sleep behind him, and Logan’s presence to ground him, he doesn’t expect the same level of discomfort he experienced the night before. 

And he doesn’t get it. What Charles experiences instead is quite unlike anything he’s experienced before.

At first, it’s a subtle sensation. As Charles attempts to sift carefully through the minds that stretch between himself and Hank across the city - rather than dive through the melee - there’s something almost... raw about the brush of foreign consciousnesses against Charles’s own.

It’s difficult for him to define, even in his own thoughts. Psionic strain has always conveyed itself to Charles through physical symptoms, as it did during his adrenaline-fueled crash back to capacity last night. Headaches, nosebleeds, exhaustion - even after a truly inadvisable use of Cerebro, Charles has only ever encountered these things as the consequence to his exertions. 

Frankly, Charles didn’t realize that it is _possible_ to feel so... tender, in the way that he feels tender now.

As he converses with Hank, picking through the tangle of his friend’s excitement, relief and concern - twisting carefully around something anxious Charles can’t quite follow to its source in Hank’s thoughts, distracted as he is - Charles worries at the growing sense of something being _changed_.

He doesn’t even realize his hands are curled into fists in his lap, painfully tight - his nails digging into the palms of his hands - until he catches Logan watching him carefully.

Without a word, Logan reaches over and takes Charles’s hands in his, straightening Charles’s curled fingers. 

‘You’re not starting that ‘not gonna impose’ bullcrap on me again, are ya, Chuck?’ he thinks at Charles, so directly, with such familiarity, Charles barely thinks before redirecting the portion of his consciousness preoccupied with the lady in 2B, next door, bemoaning an early appointment in Marseilles - and a trio of teens down the street, up to no good - to Logan’s welcoming psyche.

The difference is so immediately obvious, and so intense, that Charles actually thinks his reaction - a revealing soft ‘Oh’ - is aloud. 

Logan’s thinking something fond about Charles - which seemlessly merges with the scintillating question, at Charles’s soft exhalation, of whether or not Charles would smell like him - and like sex, after last night - if Logan drew nearer. 

Logan entertains a fleeting, inexplicable memory of kissing down Charles’s body, Charles’s body as it is now, back in his bed at the mansion - _all_ the way down - searching for his own scent, his own taste, on Charles’s skin.

Charles tears himself away, as soon as he’s given Hank their location and requested that he meet them half way - with some of his serum.

“Sorry,” Logan says, with one of his brash grins, but there is a careful stillness about his eyes that echoes the concern Charles had glimpsed just before he’d withdrawn his grasping mind from his new lover’s.

‘Bet it’d scare ‘im away if I kissed that mouth right now,’ Logan had thought.

Charles lets himself feel the undeniable thrill, and the comfort, of being wanted so surely, with such care. Nevermind the near-impervious assassin dogging them even at this moment - the confrontation that undoubtedly awaits them when they next see Raven (and Erik...) Nevermind their seemingly impossible past and even more impossible future.

Charles allows the simple, sweet joy of newfound intimacy to spread his own lips wide in an honest smile. And before Logan can more than blink in apparent surprise, he takes Logan’s deliciously rugged, devilishly handsome face in his hands and kisses him for all that Charles is worth.

That, too, Charles must tear himself away from. But it’s worth it to see a rare expression of having been caught off-guard on the other man’s face.

“No apologies are necessary,” Charles assures him. “But if we’re going to escape this shop without being reported for trespassing _and_ public indecency... it would be best that we save those thoughts for later, I think.”

There might not _be_ a ‘later’ - for them. But if Charles is to believe in things like time travel, male pregnancy, and his own future dominion over a small army of formidable warriors... Well. He can believe in their having a later to enjoy together as well.

“Good call,” Logan agrees, a more natural looking smirk stealing over his features.

In moments, he and Logan are making their way out of the shop under the cover of pre-dawn darkness - Charles with a calling card in his pocket that he’d picked up off of the shop’s front counter, in the hopes of one day making some reparations for the damage they’ve left behind them. Logan leaves with Charles in his arms - not the least conspicuous method of public transportation Charles has ever enjoyed, though perhaps the most pleasant. 

(That is, if one ignores the speculative or derogatory thoughts Charles discovers, with no real surprise, to be among those of the scattering of people also out on the streets of Paris this early.)

Charles is relieved for a variety of reasons by the time a taxi screeches to a stop on the street just ahead of them, and Hank sticks his head out of a window.

“Charles!”

The taxi waits as Hank spills out onto the sidewalk and hurries to them. “My... friend was mugged,” he hears Hank explain stiltedly to the watching taxi driver. “They- they stole his wheelchair.”

The frenchman couldn’t care less why one third of his (rather battered looking) fare had to be carried to him. He nods with equanimity and patiently waits for Logan to deposit Charles in the back seat then climb in after, with Hank jaunting around the back of the taxi and sliding in through the other door.

Hank turns in his seat, so that his movements are hidden, and prepares a syringe for Charles as they carry on a carefully edited conversation about how the night played out for each of them - but Charles doubts, from what he can’t help but pick up from the direction of their driver, that the man would blink if they made a spectacle out of either Charles’s injection or talk of the Sentinel and how they’d evaded it.

Logan helps Charles tug off his coat, and Charles rolls up his sleeves as Hank somewhat unsubtly complains of how humid it is this morning. Logan rolls his eyes and Charles smiles fondly. When Hank presses forward - nearly putting his face right next to their taxi driver’s (effectivelly blocking any view of Charles through the rearview mirror) and proceeds to reiterate, slowly and with tedious clarification of detail, the directions he’d already given the driver, Charles ties a quick, tight tourniquet and administers himself his dose of the serum.

‘He keeps babblin’ like that,’ Logan thinks at Charles clearly, although the serum has already begun to do its job, and Charles’s perceptions are beginning to narrow once again. ‘He’s gonna talk the cabbie into being suspicious.’

‘He’s simply nervous,’ Charles reasons, ‘and we’re almost there.’

He doesn’t think of the anxiety he’d sensed in Hank earlier, attributing his friend’s off-puttedness now to concern for their safety. But then they arrive at the hotel where Hank and Erik moved their things. Even after they’ve strode through its doors, apprehension rests in Hank’s mind - separate from his relief of their having arrived safely at their destination.

Charles can pick up no more than the fact that this apprehension exists by the time they are inside, Logan depositing Charles in the wheelchair Hank had arranged for him. 

“Hank, is everything alright?” he must ask, once they’re on an elevator.

Logan’s lips twitch, and Charles can admit that the question sounds ridiculous under the circumstances, but Hank seems to get why Charles is asking.

“What? Oh. Oh, yeah, it’s- It’s good. It’s a good thing. Of course. I’m just- You know,” Hank stutters. 

And Charles is almost too busy berating himself for not having examined Hank’s anxiety closer - as he obviously seems to assume Charles has done - to catch it, but he does. Hank _blushes_.

The elevator doors have opened, and Hank immediately exists. He leads Logan and Charles to a door only shortly down the hall.

By the time they reach it, Charles understands. He can sense _him_ and his friends on the other side of the door, even with the serum slowly turning his senses muggy and faded.

“What’s a good thing?” Logan asks, but Charles is smiling.

He wheels past Hank and opens the room door without knocking.

Gathered in the room’s sitting area, along with Erik and Raven, is a small group of young men in plainsclothes, although in their own minds they might as well still be wearing their fatigues. 

In the center of the group, Alex Summers is the only one among them not to react with alarm as Charles barges in. 

“Long time no see, Professor,” Alex says casually, while his fellow soldiers reel in their various abilities. “What’s this I hear about time-traveling robots.”

**Author's Note:**

> It wrote this for yet another prompt at xmen-firstkink. Please excuse any crackiness.


End file.
